With roughly two months left before the midterm elections, Democrats still don’t have a lock on winning back the majority, despite nearly everything in the political environment supposedly being in their favor. Between history, President Donald Trump’s approval ratings, and gas prices, polls should consistently give them a huge edge. Yet the most recent Harvard-Harris poll showed the GOP ahead by two points among likely voters on the generic congressional ballot.
The reason isn’t complicated once you look at what Democrats are actually campaigning on: nothing.
Think about it. Their entire pitch is about resisting Donald Trump. Ask what they would do with a majority, and you’ll get vague talking points about affordability (something they failed miserably at when they were in power) instead of an actual policy agenda. That’s deliberate, and it’s the same playbook Democrats ran in 2020: sound moderate enough to win the general election, then govern like radicals when you’re in power.
Jesse Watters spelled out exactly why during a heated back-and-forth with Harold Ford Jr. on The Five last week, and it was more revealing than anything Democrats have said about their own strategy. “Your party is nuts, all right,” Watters told Ford. “They don’t even put anything out because it’s so unpopular. What are they going to say? ‘We’re going to abolish ICE’? No one wants to do that, Harold.”
Ford insisted that the DSA, not the DNC, supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which isn’t true. “No. The DNC voted to get rid of ICE last week. I think you were on vacation,” Watters quipped.
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Watters then brought up the example Democrats should be embarrassed to have avoided: Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America, a written, public, specific policy platform that Republicans ran on and that preceded their historic victory in which they won a House majority. “Remember Newt’s Contract [with] America?” Watters asked. “Put it out. I mean, I dare you guys to put it out.”
They won’t take him up on it. Why? Because if Democrats actually laid out their real agenda and demanded that voters hold them to it, they’d never win.
“You guys want to nationalize the $2 trillion health insurance industry. You can’t do it because it’s stupid, Harold. You guys want to do the Green New Deal again? It didn’t work, you can’t do it,” Watters said. Both ideas failed to pass even when Democrats held the House, the Senate, and the White House at the same time. A party doesn’t campaign on ideas this unpopular.
“Tell Hakeem to meet with ME.” @JesseBWatters says Democrats are hiding an unpopular agenda, warning Hakeem Jeffries is caught between the DSA wing going “BONKERS” and presidential hopefuls trying to look normal. pic.twitter.com/9MGWcjnyH7
— The Five (@TheFive) September 5, 2026
That leaves House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) squeezed between two factions that want opposite things. The activist wing of his caucus wants confrontation: impeachment votes, government shutdowns, investigations into anything connected to Trump. The party’s presidential hopefuls want the opposite because they know the general-election electorate has no appetite for it.
Jeffries doesn’t have enough control over his own caucus to make either side back down, which is exactly why the Democrat Party’s message heading into November amounts to three words: “orange man bad.”
If their ideas were popular, they’d run on them the way Gingrich did in 1994. The fact that they won’t tell you what they’re planning is the clearest evidence yet that they already know you wouldn’t vote for it.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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